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Ohio porn law meets with stiff opposition

State governor accused of censoring the web

Within hours of an Ohio governor approving a new state law designed to crack down on web-based child pornography, a federal lawsuit was started calling for it to be scrapped.

The suit, which was filed by the Ohio Newspaper Association, along with a group of book and video store owners, maintains that the law is far too wide to be practical.

At issue is the definition that pornography is anything that might be "harmful to juveniles" and could therefore include swearing, non-obscene sexual situations, and violence in mainstream novels and movies.

The legislation was drafted by Governor Bob Taft to update Ohio's Sex Offense Law to cover electronic images viewed or stored on computer hard drives, floppy disks and other recording devices.

But the suit, filed in Dayton, claims that the law would violate free speech rights and impose restrictions on the web.

Taft explained that he expected the court challenge, but stressed that the proposed laws are aimed at sex offenders who use cyberspace intentionally to prey on children.

He said that the legislation is not aimed at mainstream books or movies "unless they have a specific intent to target juveniles, and their acts are harmful to juveniles".

Michael Bamberger, New York attorney for the book and video store trade associations, insisted that the lawsuit is about censorship.

"Ohio newspaper publishers are concerned that talking about massacres in Rwanda and murders in Columbus might fall within this broad definition," he said.

Bamberger suggested that the expanded language about allowing juveniles to view "material harmful to juveniles" is so vague that it also could endanger bookstores that permit teenagers to look at books.

The new law attempts to skirt constitutional problems associated with regulating the internet by focusing on images and other material before they are sent and after they are received, even if they are viewed on a computer monitor and are never downloaded onto a hard drive or disk.